[b-man]

The first day you show up for potentially getting picked for jury duty you don't get paid by the court, no matter what. Every time I've been sent home, losing money that I could have made working.

The courts here never pay for lunch for jurists, validated parking is sometimes provided and other times not depending on the location of the courthouse.

A couple of months ago I was summoned to serve on a Grand Jury in downtown Los Angeles located 45 miles from my home, my normal one-way commute distance is only 12 miles.

There was the potential to have to serve for a 30 day period, but not consecutively. I happened to be working a lot of overtime at that particular time and didn't want to miss out on the extra pay. I was super happy that I wasn't picked, I was counting on making that extra money to help pay for a home improvement project I'm wanting to do.

If I did get chosen to serve on a jury my employer would only pay for five days of service, after that I'd be stuck using up my vacation pay.

There are plenty of intelligent retired folks with nothing to do and plenty of free time on their hands that I'm sure would love to have the chance to do jury duty. Those of us who still have to work for a living and are the main breadwinners of the household should be allowed to opt out of it.